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Subject: 
Re: Bulk Sales in the 21st Century
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Tue, 11 Jul 2000 13:04:22 GMT
Viewed: 
418 times
  
To All,

I definately think a mold change is a bigger deal than a color change.

Maybe. I dunno.

I guess I would ask not how much *labor* was involved, but rather, how • much
time transpired while the machine was out of production. In your • description,
for example, the bull time to bring the new mold from storage has no • impact on
production (if properly scheduled...) the machine keeps running the old • mold
until the mold change person and the bull carrying the new mold arrive at • the
machine.

It really depends on how TLC handles this process, I am sure there are
millions of ways of doing it.

There is no operator, and all the machines feed parts into the same size • bins
which then go to cassettes so that helps some too.  no need to be down • while
bins are fetched, those can be prepositioned too.

I suspect labor costs are a very small fraction of the rate per hour that
having the machine down represents in lost opportunity cost.

You are just right. Actually there is a term SMED (Single Minute
Exchange of Dies) extensively used in Total Quality terminology, which
covers many methods to decrease the time consumed during die changes
down to below 10 minute barrier (single figure minute). I saw a video on
techniques used in some automotive factories (mostly Japan, of course)
for SMED and it includes many cheap things from appropriate timing and
pipelining the jobs to making needed tooling near and ready, besides
really expensive mechanisms to do that. Without doing these
improvements, it goes from 1-2 hours to half a day, and you prefer
changing colors much better to changing dies, sure.

Interesting. Where was this discussion leading, how TLC can improve its
processes to make cheaper bulk prices? I don't think they will get much
lower, a little maybe, but not to what most people were expecting.

Scott S.
--
Systems Administrator-Affiliated Engineers -> http://www.aeieng.com
LEGO Page -> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/3372/legoindex.html
Want LEGO Parts at Great Prices? Visit The Sanburn Systems Company!
http://www.sanburnsystems.com

Selçuk



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Bulk Sales in the 21st Century
 
(...) No, nothing that grand, The discussion was just around the minor point of: which has a lower cost if you go all out to reduce costs, changing a color or changing a mold. I stick to my assertion that in ultra high volume plants that have (...) (24 years ago, 16-Jul-00, to lugnet.general)

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